1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic driving control system and an automatic driving control method for determining priority of passage through vehicle-to-vehicle communications when automatically driven vehicles face each other on a road.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, technologies for automatic driving of a vehicle have been actively developed (see, for example, “MotorFun illustrated VOL. 86 Special Feature: Automatic Driving”, San-ei Shobo Publishing Co., Ltd, Nov. 15, 2013 (hereinafter referred to as “Non-patent Literature 1”)). In the automatic driving of a vehicle, for example, when automatically driven vehicles face each other on a narrow road, it is necessary for both automatic driving control systems mounted to the vehicles to determine priority indicating which of the vehicles is to pass the road first.
At this time, both the vehicles cannot simultaneously pass the narrow road when both prioritize themselves, and on the other hand, when both prioritize another party, neither of the vehicles starts to travel, failing to pass the road. Such a situation can happen even if any improvements are made to decision criteria of the automatic driving control system or accuracy of a camera or the like for providing information.
As a method of solving such a problem, it is conceivable that the automatic driving control systems of the vehicles play “rock-scissors-paper” or the like with each other, and that the priority of passage is determined based on a win-loss outcome thereof. For example, in a case of using “rock-scissors-paper”, a “hand” selected from the group consisting of “rock”, “scissors”, and “paper” is exchanged simultaneously with each other by using vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and the priority of the passage is determined based on the win-loss outcome obtained from one's own “hand” and the other's “hand”.
However, a delay occurs in actual vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and hence the “hand” for determining the priority of passage cannot be transmitted/received completely simultaneously. As a result, there is a problem in that one party that first transmitted the “hand” cannot clear away suspicion of a foul conducted by the another party waiting to see the former party's “hand” before showing the latter's own “hand” (hereinafter referred to simply as “foul”), that is, suspicion against the another party transmitting the “hand” later that the another party transmitted the “hand” advantageous thereto after seeing the “hand” of the former party.